History Headscratchers / StarTrekFirstContact

** The whole point of warp drive is to make space travel less expensive. Telling Chochrane "space travel is too expensive," is like telling the Wright brothers that powered flight was too expensive.

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** The whole point of warp drive is to make space travel less expensive. expensive, and its an entirely different approach. Telling Chochrane "space travel is just too expensive," expensive, you'll never make any money," is like telling the Wright brothers that powered flight was too expensive."flight is just a novelty, you'll never make any money building hot-air balloons".

** They wanted to show him just how important it really was that he make that flight ''at that specific time''. The fact that it had to be made at that specific date is what led them to explain more to him. They were, however, careful not to tell him (or the audience) exactly who the aliens were until they showed up.

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** The whole point of warp drive is to make space travel less expensive. Telling Chochrane "space travel is too expensive," is like telling the Wright brothers that powered flight was too expensive.

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** Picard went back for Data because Data was his friend, and he felt a personal duty to him. It also seems clear that he didn't expect to survive the attempt. Notice that Picard waited until his crew were reasonably safe before fulfilling what he considered a personal obligation.

[[folder:Why tell Cochrane so much?]]*It seemed the crew started to get touretts with Cochrane. They may have needed to break it a little to get him to fly but detailing him the full after effects of his flight seemed excessive.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Who exactly funded Cochrane?]]*Cochrane only created warp to get rich. However, space travel is prohibitively expensive with no cash payoffs. How did Cochrane envision making money off of warp drive?[[/folder]]

[[folder:Why save Data?]]*Picard initially explained that you should consider a fellow crew member dead if they've been gotten to by the board and put them out of their mercy. I know the answer for TV watchers is Picard saved Data was because Picard cared about Data because Data is one of the seven main characters and all those others redshirts were insignificat, but shouldn't Picard have followed the same logic? [[/folder]]

*** It also has relatively little bearing on the plot. It's like the screenwriters wanted Picard to be a rebel for some reason in the early part of the narrative, rather than just have the ship start out so far way that it arrives at Earth in the late stages of the battle.

** I never understood that. Picard dealt with the Borg several times after being Locutus and ever showed any signs of being compromised by the experience (other than not wanting to see Hugh). Admiral Bitcheyev even put him in charge of a three starship task force to fight against a Borg invasion ("Descent"). It's only in this film (and the TNG films in general), does Picard go bat-shit crazy when he usually wouldn't have. Yet Picard is side-lined, but he was the only one who had the inside knowledge to get the fleet to finally defeat the Cube. Had Admiral Hayes let him come, he could have helped to save hundreds if not thousands of lives by speeding up the Borg defeat...

** I can buy the Security Chief (Lt Daniels, I believe), being replaced by Worf especially when he's off leading the fight against the Borg on the lower decks given Worf's experience in that role, but what about before? He wasn't even invited to the staff meeting at the start of the film to discuss the Borg threat, which as a presumed senior officer and major department head, he should have been (Troi was there and she's completely useless even at her own job) And he presumably pressed the button that fired the phasers/torpedoes that brought down the Borg Cube, yet as soon as Worf is on board he gets shoved aside without even a thanks and gets sent off to fight the unwinnable war against the invulnerable enemy. Sucks to be him, I guess.

*** I'd call intentionally beaming yourself, the captain, into a hostile situation as a hostage just so you can have a chat with a madman to be negligent. Or at the very least, Riker was for never thinking to rotate the shield frequencies when the Bird of Prey opened fire and the torpedoes weren't stopped by the shields, or putting Troi of all people into the driver's seat during a battle and a risky saucer separation.

** we have heard in many an episode about "port shields" and "aft shields" etc, which would suggest that shields, even though they form a bubble, there are separate generators and what have you that project the shields in different areas. So its possible that the Enterprise dropped its starboard shields (the ones closest to the Defiant) to beam Worf over while keeping the port side shields facing the Borg Cube active. In "Nemesis" we even see CGI and graphics of different shield areas failing at different times.

** I was more confused by Worf ordering the Defiant to ram the Cube like he didn't give a shit, then once he's beamed onto the Enterprise, he asks about his ship like he cares. He's bothered if it was destroyed, but not bothered enough not to ram it into another ship killing himself and everyone else on board?*** Also, the last time we see the Defiant is when the Enterprise-E covers it from weapons fire. The Defiant was very close the Cube at that point. Then Picard has the Defiant evacuated, so clearly no one is flying it around any more and its said to be adrift. The a few minutes later the Cube explodes... so apparently the drifting Defiant wasn't close enough to get caught in that explosion, when we clearly see at least one Starfleet ship graze the edge of that explosion and be instantly destroyed. Tough little ship indeed.

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